May 2005 Archives
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May 23, 2005
A Real Test
Well, I don't know about real. In fact, I don't even know if I have the right scripts on the server to properly handle this message. Regardless, I'm on a plane in coach with what appears to be David Letterman on the big screen in the middle of the 767. It's American, so there is "more room" in coach, of course. What does that mean? I think that means that all of the seats "accidentally" recline and you feel like you have more room. Well, at least the latch on mine that keeps them from reclining without pushing the button is broken (and on a few seats around me). The air is incredibly dry. I think the skin on my hands will peel and fall off. I'm in a seat with power. Yipee. The flight isn't terrible long, so my battery will probably last almost half of it, anyway (actually, its two batteries in my ancient Inspiron 8100, but they give about the power of one these days). At least I'll be able to plug in if I need to. Other than already getting a couple of minor work things done, I can't do a whole lot work related on the plane. My normal work includes needed to have a net connection and live, activated cell phones. I have neither here. I was thinking of doing more French stuff, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable doing that on the plane. That is, everyone around me would be able to watch. And what will they think? From afar, it may look like I'm playing a kids game. Then I have to think, "Do I really care what people think? I can do my own thing, can't I?" Yeah, I guess. Maybe I will; maybe I won't. One thing I'm not doing is watching whatever is on the TV. There's some movie coming on in a while. I'm not all that interested although it's a great way to take up the time without exerting much energy. Since I got up at 5:30am I'm not too concerned about getting to sleep too late... in fact, I'm more concerned about getting to sleep too early. I'm now looking at the seat and the size of my current laptop and wondering how well an Inspiron 9300/XPS Gen 2 sized laptop would fit in this seat. It would be quite a bit wider to accommodate for the 17" wide screen and I think it's at least as deep. Weight-wise I think it might be a wee bit less, actually, which is cool. I suppose I could just keep rambling, but even that is starting to wear my fingers out (they're dry, remember?) Off to the Big Apple (where on earth did that come from??)Off to New York Today
For work related reasons, I'm off to New York (isn't it often called something else? blue apple, big red, red apple? i dunno)
I've never been there. I'm not really sure what to expect other than a big city. I'll be working a couple of blocks from the south end of Central Park on Madison avenue. Apparently I'm staying about half a block off of Broadway (street? avenue? does anyone care?).
I'm told there are lots of things to do and see there. I'll see (literally, I suppose).
I haven't flown in a while again. Actually, it was in March going to New Orleans. For a while I liked flying because it was a fairly distraction free place to do things. Now it's just uncomfortable. At least I'm not taking a red eye. However, I don't land until nearly 8pm local time. That means it'll be dark; especially after I get my bags and get a taxi to my hotel. I sure hope it has late food available.
I don't have to worry about the time change much. The company I'm visiting doesn't "open" until 10am. As I told them, I may occasionally beat them in even though they have a 3 hour time zone advantage.
Oh, I have a blue apple on my shirt. That's for Apple, the company. Hmm. Maybe I'm just imagining things.
Edmund Scientifics Still Around
I think they've been around too long. Here they have a smoking expirement kit. It's great and all. You can find out how much tar is in any particular cigarette.
What they seem to have forgotten is that you have to be at least 18 to buy the cigarettes for the kit. On one hand, a kid with this kit probably doesn't smoke. On the other hand, if they did smoke you'd know they were smoking the cleanest cigaretts.
It's really rather odd, actually.
http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp?pn=3038821&bhcd2=1116865583
May 19, 2005
Natch: [Slang] Word of the Day
Of course, the definition is. Actually, if you speak the word naturally but cut off the "urally" part you're left with "nat" but then you've lost part of the pronunciation so the two hidden letters in natchurally return as in natch.
For some reason, this reminds me of Pinky and the Brain. Odd.
I'd heard it before, but never really thought much of it until I saw it in a Google Blog post. Now I know. And if you didn't, now you know, natch.
For fast, quiet, lower power desktop operation...
The AOpen i915GMm-HFS micro ATX mobo supports the latest Pentium M and has full dual channel 533MHz DDR2 memory support. If only it also had Intel's GMA for sufficient video at low power consumption.
Our old desktop, an Athlon XP 1600+ with ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card sucks up about $20-30 a month, idling most of the time. We haven't had it on daily in at least a year or two. Something like this mobo, though, could provide the size and power draw to allow the convenience of an always on desktop at home... hrm... if only it wasn't so bloody expensive.
May 18, 2005
Strange Animal Facts of the Day
The duck-billed platypus has always intruiged me. Why is it so very different from other animals? Everyone knows it swims, has a duck bill, lays eggs, and is a mammal. But who knew their young were called puggles? And who knew the following?
Even more curious are the experiements in Japan where female mice were able to produce young without any male or sperm involvement. The could be useful for saving species. But it better not make males redundant. :p
PERLGURL: The Blog of Laurie Darcey: Puggles - The Baby Platypus
May 17, 2005
Chaebol: Word of the Day
Not that I do words of the day here, but I found it interesting anyway. ;)
Definition:
Korean translation of the Japanese word zaibatsu, or business conglomerate. A group of specialized companies with interrelated management servicing each other.
Found in a Wired article about Samsung.
Miata Back in the Shop
Yes, it's back in the shop. It had to be towed up yesterday because after what happened I didn't feel it was a good idea to drive it all the way up to Hayward.
Actually, with AAA Plus towing and not having to drive two cars up and one back I think the whole thing was cheaper. It would have cost an addition $10-15 in gas, alone. (About 40 miles one-way, two cars up, 1 back for a total of 120 miles of additional driving at about 20 mpg and $2.60 per gallon is about $15.60.)
I still need to run new mileage calculations on both the Jeep and the Miata. Neither are particularly good, but it would be nice to see just how bad they are. I think...
In any case, the Miata will likely be in for a while to determine the cause of the current problems, which are bit mysterious.
May 16, 2005
Star Wars: Entertainment or Just About the Money?
All of the Star Wars movies are very high on the all time Box Office numbers. As a complete franchise, though, it's unbeatable.
#2 Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope - $460,998,007
#5 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - $431,088,301
#17 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones - $310,676,740
#18 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi - $309,306,177
#22 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back - $290,475,067
Total so far: $1,802,544,292
Where will the final movie land? Regardless of how good or bad people thought episode 2 was, people will go watch episode 3 to find out where the story goes. I'll guess that it will come out ranking 3 out of all 6. Just a guess, though. I haven't seen it yet, either. :(
Miata: Doing Worse
I almost didn't make it in today. It stopped having power around the same place as last time I drove it. However, this time it didn't regain power as easily. I got it back at one point, but only for a little bit. I finally had to park it on the side of the road for about 10 minutes with it off.
Actually, I didn't plan on parking it. I had planned on calling AAA. The first time I dialed the number, I just had silence for a bit. Sometimes that happens when the circuits are busy and the call will go through after a minute. Not so, this time. So, I tried calling again. When I looked at the phone after a minute it was in the process of resetting! My phone had crashed trying to make a phone call!
Well, after it came on I got side tracked with SMS messages I'd missed the entire weekend. Then I started it and it got to about a block before our parking lot fine. I had to gently nudge it all the way in. That wasn't much fun. I'm waiting for the comments at work on why I parked somewhere different.
I think I'll have it get it towed up to Hayward. It's not that it necessarily wouldn't make it. It's more that it might take a while to make it. At the same time, if I arrived with the problem in full swing, it might make diagnosis easier. Of course, the problem may not be good for the car, so that might not be worthwhile. Additionally, the computer may have the correct problem logged.
It's really strange that the tach will bounce around when in gear coasting down a road. That doesn't seem possible unless there is an electrical problem of some sort. The tach must not measure engine speed by anything mechanical, either. That's a bit strange.
May 14, 2005
Fair Use and Blogging
Ever wonder if you can copy a bit of text and comment on it? Probably not. This is such a common thing that just about everyone knows that it's perfectly OK to do so long as you're actually commenting on it, talking about it with respect to news, or criticizing it (such as a review, or whatever).
But what if you want to use an image from another site attached to an article you're commenting on? Or what about a picture of a car you want to talk about? What if that car isn't yours? What if you want to talk about a company and use their logo so everyone knows that you're talking about the real one and not some company with a similar name?
Nolo is often a great resource for legal issues. It, however, did not mention anything about images. In fact, part of what it talked about is something is more likely to be fair use if you're not using anywhere near all of it. However, when using an image, you're usually using all of it. So, what then?
Well, Laurie found a great Wikipedia entry that talks about this for their own use. Since they have so many people posting a variety of things on the site and they certainly want images, this becomes a huge issue for them. They have a great 10 part questionnaire that gives an idea if a use is fair or not for an image.
In general, things like screen shots, corporate logos, book covers, album covers, historical pictures, and other such things may be fair use. However, the thing to bring back from all of this is that it's all on a case by case basis.
Another way to tell is if you're using an image or text to further your own works to compete with the source you copied from. If, on the other hand, you're using it to review or promote the source you're copying from, that may more likely be fair use. Why? Either could cause damage, especially if the review was very negative. However, that does a public service, which may be OK for fair use (see the Nolo page for an example of this).
I believe I would be completely OK in using both the Wikipedia logo and the Nolo log on this posting because I'm talking about them and their resources and recommending people go look at their writings. I could also quote various parts of their text to comment on. I've done neither. Why? In this case, I'm too lazy to go do that. And that's a fair reason to not use fair stuff. Har. :p
Wikipedia:Fair use - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
May 12, 2005
Curious World Map Projection
I was looking at the CIA WFB today and happened upon the world link. I don't remember this projection from last time I looked at the page, but it's definitely a bit odd. I mean, it works and is somewhat accurate. Curiously, a straight horizontal line probably follows a path similar to the orbit of a satellite.
In any case, enjoy.
(Click for a bigger version.)
Joint Stereo: Why It's Better
If you've ever wanted to know what joint stereo is, this article is a great introduction to it.
"Don't confuse Joint Stereo (Stereo mode 1) with the Joint Stereo coding used for MPEG layer 2 encoding - it is not the same. Joint Stereo (Stereo mode 1) encoding for MPEG layer3 allows the XingMP3 Encoder to use additional methods of encoding, specifically - MS Stereo (Middle/Side Stereo), and for lower bitrates only, Intensity Stereo, in addition to the Independent Channel coding used for Stereo mode 0. MS Stereo uses one channel to encode information that is identical on the left and right channels and the other channel to encode the differences between the two channels. Intensity Stereo encodes only bits that are perceived to be important to the stereophonic image. The XingMP3 Encoder uses Intensity Stereo only in low bitrate files, (96kbps or less) where file size is critical to the user. In Joint Stereo (Stereo mode 1), the encoder dynamically (frame by frame) chooses the method of encoding that produces the best quality for each individual frame. Dynamic encoding improves compression efficiency which results in a higher quality file using less bits. Stereo mode 0 encodes the left and right channels independently. The total bitrate remains constant, but the split between the channels can vary. The XingMP3 Encoder uses this flexibility to improve quality by allocating more bits to the channel with the more dynamic signal. For MPEG layer 3 encoding, Stereo mode 0 limits the encoder to only one method of encoding - Independent Channels. Because Stereo mode 0 is limited to one method of encoding, Joint Stereo (Stereo mode 1) in most cases produces higher quality. In the exceptions, the Stereo mode 0 quality will be essentially equivalent to Joint Stereo (Stereo mode 1)."
That wasn't actually very good for me. This mathematical example is better for me:
Now, if you can handle a bit of schoolboy algebra, let's demonstrate that these two alternative formats of storing stereo data are completely interchangeable. To begin with, the simplest way of storing 2-channel audio data is in terms of the Left (L) and Right (R) values at any particular time:Left = L Right = R
In Mid/Side format, we store the Average and Difference values instead:
Middle = (L+R)/2 Side = (L-R)/2
Note that the sign of the Side value is very important. The usual convention is that positive Side indicates that the Left signal is bigger than the Right; a negative Side indicates that the Right is bigger.
Should we wish to return from Mid/Side format back to Left/Right, then we can recreate the Left channel by summing the Average plus the (Left-Right) Difference, and the Right channel by taking the Average minus the Difference, as follows:
Left = Middle + Side Right = Middle - Side
Substituting the earlier expressions for Middle and Side:
Left = (L+R)/2 + (L-R)/2 Right = (L+R)/2 - (L-R)/2
Or, in other words:
Left = L Right = R
Back where we started from!
The article also shows how this can result in a more accurate reproduction of the original samples because the absolute loss on the side channel, although perhaps a larger percent, is much smaller when the two channels of sound are similar, which they usually are. In fact, if they were completely out of phase, the music probably wouldn't sound as good anyway. (Unless, of course, your speakers are out of phase, too, but most of this goes well beyond my physical hearing abilities.)
It's a long read, but worthwhile if you've ever been concerned that the Joint Stereo option in your MP3 encoder is a useless option (it's not unless your encoder has bugs).
Comment Troubles
I suspected that the ability to comment may have been broken again. However, I just got proof from someone. So, I've turned off the requirement to be TypeKey registered. All comments will still be moderated, though.
My spam blocker here works pretty well, so I may not need to turn TypeKey back on. It's a bit goofy that spammers could get through the need to be registered and real people couldn't. Must be bugs in the system still... oh well.
May 11, 2005
Miata Troubles
Although it's wicked fun to drive, our Miata has become a black hole for money as the troubles continue. The check engine light has been on for a while; Rick (of PR Motorsports) knows about it. The part that was assumed to be the main cause of the light based on the diagnostic codes was replaced, but the light didn't go away. Of course, I have to get the car smogged this month so it can get registered.
However, it's now actually mis-behaving. Twice now, on the freeway, a problem has occurred. I'll be cruising along, having not pushed the car even a little bit for the morning, and then the tack will go wild, bouncing all over where it should be. This usually happens when the gas is down a little and it can't get any power or accelerate at all.
Yesterday this happened and after pulling over and letting the car idle for a bit, it went away. Today, however, it came back a few times even after stopping and restarting the car. I don't think it's particularly dangerous since it'll idle fine with the clutch depressed, so all the electric stuff still has power.
Oddly, no one has honked or yelled at me for slowing them down a few seconds. They have gotten within inches of the car, though. In all cases, though, they've been on the phone, so maybe that's preventing them from being overly rude. Heh.
In any case, at least part of the reason for posting this is to have a record of it and a date, etc. So, for the none of you that read this, if it bores you, sorry. :p
May 6, 2005
iTunes: Good Things, Bad Things
I recently posted that I had to install iTunes for some work related items. Everyone around me runs iTunes, on either their work provided Dell machines or their personal 12" or 15" PowerBooks. I have avoided it not out of dislike for Apple (they are one of our better performing stocks at this point) but simply because I've liked WinAmp for a long, long time.
I don't listen to music or watch videos much on my computer. When I do, though, I usually use WinAmp. I like the extremely unobtrusive interface. It minimizes down to a skinny little bar that also hides itself, being completely out of the way. In full mode, it has visualizations better than anything else out there, many of them rivaling full demos.
I rarely use Windows Media Player, but when I do I usually am overwhelmed by the shear number of features. On my machine, it's got about 10 stores that sell songs and videos for download. It does all kinds of magic play list stuff. It supports just about every MP3 player around. It also supports tons of formats and uses standard Windows codecs.
Then comes QuickTime Pro. I use QuickTime Pro mostly for converting video into 3G2 format for my phone. It also gets used a lot in plug-in format as a long of video on the net uses it's movie format. This works pretty well. QuickTime Pro isn't free, though.
Now this is supposed to about iTunes. Please note that all of these are about iTunes 4.7.1.30 on Windows XP SP2.
The Google Web Accelerator: Too Beta
In a rare occurance, we have a new application from Google that actually seems a little bit too much in beta, at least for me.
I installed it yesterday, as I'm sure many people did. At first, it seemed to be working OK. That said, the numbers seem a little inflated. I haven't measured with and without the accelerator to see if there really is any difference, but I haven't really felt one yet.
However, I have felt the bugs. I won't attempt to accelerate SSL pages. However, it will attempt to accelerate password protected pages that aren't on SSL. Unfortunately, it doesn't work when this is attempted. It just immediately gives an unauthorized page. If I then tell it to not accelerate "this" page I get the password asked for at every link. I have to turn off the accelerator completely. And I did try to turn it off for the domain in question, but that didn't help either. It seems it futzes with the authentication somehow. This happened in both IE and Firefox.
The next problem may just be a Firefox issue with proxies because it did not occur under IE. The address bar no longer works properly. It won't update with the correct URL and I can't enter new URLs into it. To use Firefox, I have enter the URLs in the Google Deskbar (ironically enough) to get them to open up.
Due to both of these problems, I'm going to be forced to completely remove the Google Web Acceerator from my system. Maybe in a rev or two it'll be all fixed up.
For my own record, I'm using:
googlewebaccclient.exe: version 0.2.52.65-pintail.a
googlewebaccwarden.exe: version 0.1.52.57-dogcatcher.a
Firefox extension: version 2005050312
May 5, 2005
Airbus A380
A model of a bar area in an Airbus A380 shows how the plane's "superjumbo" proportions may benefit some passengers. The plane's main and upper levels will serve as passenger areas. The lower deck will be for freight -- or additional passenger facilities such as sleeper cabins, child care, gymnasiums, casinos, or business centers, at the discretion of the airlines that purchase the planes.
The photos of the new Airbus A380 here are great, especially the interior ones. Could you imagine taking an 18 hour flight where you could sleep a full 8 hours, work out at the gym for a couple of hours, play some slots, hang out at the bar, and still have time to get a few hours of work done? Actually, just imagining a gym on a plane is hard enough. These things are flying cruise ships. If they had some suites, I could see a cruise-like service set up for around the world trips, with the normal stops at "ports" and other such things except by plane rather than boat.
On a side note, I see the model number A380 and I immediately thing, "What new Samsung handset is that?"
National Geographic News Photo Gallery: Airbus A380 "Superjumbo" Plane
May 4, 2005
Cereal Box Surprises
It used to be you might find a toy or a trading card or more likely a coupon to get something by mail in a cereal box. But not anymore. You can actually get a pet snake in a cereal box! How cool!
Jordan Willett, 5, thought he had found a toy when the serpent -- a harmless corn snake -- slithered out of the packet of "Golden Puffs" his parents had bought from discount store Netto in Telford, central England.
Nice.
British boy finds snake in cereal box - Food, Inc. - MSNBC.com
May 3, 2005
iTunes and (the Missing) Download Speeds
I'm used to downloading things at work at about 150 kilobytes per second (KBps) and at home at around 600 KBps. Most normal website will give me these sorts of speeds (at least 150KBps).
Due to work considerations, I'm now having to download and install iTunes. The wonder of Apple servers is giving me all of it's measly 21.3 MB at about 18 KBps. So, I figured I had plenty of time to rant about it. It says there are 15 minutes left right now. I downloaded the full Ubuntu CDs the other week in about 15 minutes at home (about 600megs at 615KBps). Why on earth is it so slow?! It's dropped now to 16 KBps. Blah.
If this is the sort of performance I can expect with download music, what's the point? It'd be quicker to walk to Borders. Oh, actually, I have zero intention of downloading any music with it. It's supposed to play some file I have. Given QuickTime doesn't, I'm skeptical, but we'll see. But if I was going to be impressed into using it, this is most definitely not the way to do it.
Or maybe they only give fast bandwidth to Mac clients? That'd be great. A Mac downloading at 10x the speed on the same network. But really... why would a Mac need to? Isn't it preloaded?
Well, 7 minutes remaining and it's back up to 18 KBps. I can't ramble on for that long, so I'll have to go do something else.
